Common Threads delivers letter to Whatcom County

n November 2015, the voters of Whatcom County voted to change our County from 3 County Council Districts to 5 County Council Districts.

Common Threads had brought the issue of the County Council taking the action of putting this issue on the ballot before a judge in August of 2015. The judge would not interfere with the issue going before the voters. However, he did take some issue with the shoddy work done by the Whatcom County Council on this issue.

One area that we argued before the judge was that Ordinance 2015-029 and Exhibit A passed by the Whatcom County Council on July 7, was, in fact, a re-districting and therefore the Whatcom County Council was acting as the “re-districting commission” contrary to the Whatcom County Charter and State Law. We were assured that the language in that ordinance was only for the purpose of giving the voters of Whatcom County an “idea” of what the new districts could look like.

We felt it necessary to reiterate this concern and make it perfectly clear to Whatcom County and the Re-districting Commission that the map provided with Ordinance 2015-029 is not relevant to the work of the Re-districting Commission.